Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It’s 2015, and we finally have female action figures to play with. Only they look like this. To answer @slashwhatever, the person on Twitter asking, “Am I the only one that thinks this is a little fucked up?” I’d say no, sir, you definitely are not. Hideo Kojima’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid V will feature the…
The miniature wargame play celebrated in the War Game Digest could reach only a limited audience because it required painstaking efforts from dedicated and artisanal adults. Avalon Hill’s board wargames, on the other hand, could reasonably aspire to reach the mass market. They built on the recognized tradition of juvenile board games, but with a…
How roleplaying games and fantasy fiction confounded the FBI, confronted the law, and led to a more open web On January 17, 1980, FBI agents descended on a small business in Wisconsin to investigate a plot against the life of an American business executive in Beirut, Lebanon, named William Weatherby. The tip came to local…
What if a stalker had an army? Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with destroying her reputation—and thousands of online strangers were eager to help. The first thing Eron Gjoni said after sitting down across from me at Veggie Galaxy in December was that he would probably violate his gag order if he talked to me….
Vote manipulation. Banned journalists and YouTubers. Reddit moderators who enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence. Not all is well in the community of one of the most world’s popular video games. Over the past few weeks, the Reddit page for the game League of Legends—a vibrant community that’s home to over 670,000 subscribers—has run into…
Bonding over nothing is still bonding. This is something that people need to remember when they turn their noses up at the popularity of the Reddit Button. In the three weeks since it has appeared, it has been described as an evil April Fool’s joke, a social experiment, and a total waste of time. The…
From the very first game in the series through to today, India’s supposedly-peaceful leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been famous for one thing: dropping nukes. And there’s a very good reason for it. It’s not your mind playing tricks on you, or a case of myth becoming accepted fact, he really does drop nukes more than…
TIME 100 Pioneers Anita Sarkeesian By Wil Wheaton Elizabeth Weinberg Gaming’s feminist advocate Anita Sarkeesian has played video games her whole life. In 2012, after observing that women represent about 40% of the gaming audience, she launched a crowdfunding campaign for Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, a web series that would “explore five common…
I recently had an argument with a friend about games that require a constant internet connection. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he kept repeating. “Everybody has the internet.” What’s funny about this is that my friend lives with his parents while attending college part-time and working a low-paid internship; his parents pay…
By Madeline Messer March 4Madeline Messer is a student in the 6th grade. iStock For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. One day I noticed that my friend was playing…